NBC’s ‘The Voice’ ratings debate: Is Blake Shelton’s popularity bad for the show?
Brace yourselves: We’re about to open up a massive can of controversy on “The Voice.”
We’ll start by saying this: We like Blake Shelton a lot. He seems to be a guy you’d want to hang out with, he knows his type of music really well, and his “aw, shucks” demeanor and finger-pointing self-promotion are perfect for the show. We didn’t know much about him before season 1 being someone who doesn’t listen to country music, but this series has turned us into fans.
However, we are going to go to a dangerous place here and wonder: Is Team Blake too unstoppable of a force for the show’s own good? Every season, he has had an artist make it into the top two, and he won both seasons 2 and 3. Heck, last season he had the winner in Cassadee Pope, and the runner-up in Terry McDermott.
This season, Blake is yet again dominating. Danielle Bradbery has become so popular that her doppelganger Amanda Seyfried is probably jealous, and the Swon Brothers are suddenly the next great duo in country music. Like all of Blake’s former finalists, they’re talented, but we are possibly looking at the second straight season of the “Boys Round Here” singer occupying the top two spots on the show. If you go based on this week’s iTunes sales, both of his acts had two songs in the top ten. Meanwhile, Michelle Chamuel didn’t have any for Team Usher.
If you love Blake and only Blake, you probably love that he continues to rule this show like he’s Sony at the recent E3 press conference. At the same time, you probably don’t feel that way if you root for anyone else. The competition has become, if we’re being honest, completely slanted. Do you still have to work hard to win? Sure, but if you’re on Team Blake it doesn’t matter if you are a country singer or any other genre, because he’s won with R&B, with pop, and came in second with old-school rock. If he wins this year, it would be the first time he’s actually done so with an act that’s pure country. (Cassadee’s original sound was more pop-rock.)
This is the pattern that we fear the show is heading down: If you are a country artist, you’re going to audition for the show and pick Blake. Then, he’ll help you pick songs to get you to the finale, and beat a heap of other singers. Some ratings will suffer, but country fans will keep watching. That’s what has happened this year; viewership has dropped over the past few weeks, and you can blame it on either summer or the slow aging of singing competitions in general. We’ll be stunned if anyone other than Danielle wins, and thus it will be a predictable champ for the second straight year.
We don’t want NBC to get rid of Blake, but we would say this: Maybe it’s time to get rid of iTunes voting, or at least the part where your votes are multiplied if you are in the top 10. This has made it too obvious who the favorites are every week, and while we know this is a nice revenue stream, it’s basically saying that people who want to spend money are the people who deserve a winning artist. For whatever reason, most of the people who want to spent money are Blake fans.
It’s time for “The Voice” to at least consider level the playing field somewhat since, to use a sports analogy, no one wants to watch a baseball game where you know almost for sure one team is going to win every time. Ratings thrive on competition, and it will be better for the show to have some again.
Do you think Blake’s success has gotten out of hand, or is this something that is more of a testament to Blake’s success, and should actually be celebrated (maybe with a country singing show that he is at the helm of?) We want to hear what your opinion is on this issue below! If you want to take a look ahead at “The Voice’s” upcoming finale, all you have to do is click here.
Photo: NBC
David Perkins
June 16, 2013 @ 1:55 am
I’m not a country music fan, per se, but I don’t buy the premise that “most of the people who want to spend money (on iTunes) are Blake fans.” It’s absurd. There’s no evidence that only fans of Blake are willing to spend money on iTunes. Two weeks ago, Michelle Chamuel beat everyone in iTunes sales. Why? People simply preferred Michelle’s version of Taylor Swift’s ”I Knew You Were Trouble’ to anything else that week. With the right song choice, the any contestant can dominate iTunes sales. I don’t think the show needs any changes at all. Yes, perhaps country singers have an advantage right now. And yes, perhaps Blake Shelton draws millions of viewers to the show each week. And yes, perhaps the other coaches need to help their talent pick songs (in the way Michelle did) that would dominate the iTunes charts. To suggest that country music or Blake should be handicapped in some way to make an even playing field is nuts.
BlownAwayBy Danielle
June 15, 2013 @ 1:47 pm
The other coaches need to learn from Blake. Contrast Blake and Adam.
Adam coaches as if he is a gymnastics coach, and his artists are going to perform in front of a small panel of “expert” judges to be judged on “technical proficiency”. Wrong event and the wrong strategy.
Blake understands making his contestants better artists is part of his job and an important ingredient in winning. But he also gets it that this is a popularity contest and his job is part record producer, marketing executive and campaign manager.
To his credit, Usher figured this out when he broke out the Michelle glasses, then got Taylor Swift to appear during her practice enabling Michelle to beat Danielle in itunes sales her only time. Nothing is going to make a cover of a popular contemporary artist sell like the endorsement of the artist. I expect another similar big PR stunt from Usher this week. Like a Justin Bieber appearance or something.
Meanwhile, Team Adam has gone home already.
ccitizen60
June 14, 2013 @ 10:31 pm
Blake does a better job helping his contestants find the right songs producing those break through moments when the viewers start to connect with the singers as interesting, likable people not just as vocalists (e.g. Swon Brothers with “Who’s Gonna Fill Their Shoes”). And have you noticed how Blake often focuses his comments on his contestants as people rather than just singers? Usher seems to have noticed. Early in the season Usher’s coaching, while remarkably creative, focused on the vocals and showmanship. Finally with Michelle he started shifting some of the focus on the artist as a person, which seems to be working. Adam on the other hand, though obviously a dedicated coach, doesn’t seem to pick up on the importance of the personal connection. I was very impressed with Judith’s vocal ability but never had any sense about her as a remarkable or interesting person. And in one of her performances the lights, dancers and over the top hair style swamped even her remarkable vocal talent. If Adam takes a page from Blake’s mentoring book and continues to get the vocal horsepower on his team in the future he’ll be hard for Blake or anyone else to beat.
In a related note Blake takes a lot of good natured jabs from Adam and others, at least one would hope they are good natured, but anyone who fails understand that he is a caring, thoughtful and intelligent coach is obviously underestimating him and setting themselves up to come in second or worse.
bee
June 13, 2013 @ 9:17 am
I don’t think it is much on Blake being popular, but really on Blake being a smart ass on making strategies and stuff. As you can see, Usher is now studying his moves and getting better by choosing the right songs, playing with the audience through social media, overpraising his contestant, having the #4eyesontheprize campaign and even getting Taylor Swift to go to rehearsal and tweet about his contestant (what a strategy! it landed on Top 10 on Itunes). Heck, Michelle Chamuel might even with this getting the non-country votes!
Obviously, country artist will pick Blake, because he is a country artist – just like Monique Abbadie picking Shakira because she’s her idol. Blake is really popular on Country, but for me, Adam, Shakira, and Usher are way more popular than Blake. Ohh and I am a hardcore country fan at that, but can still admit this.
lsbloom
June 13, 2013 @ 1:28 am
Itunes is a vastly smaller voting pool than online and phone–it’s only the people who want to pay and unless you get in the top ten it is only one vote vs up to 10 on the other methods. It just happens that it is a publicly available way to monitor voting. We can see it and since it is the most rarefied vote it is pretty indicative of all the other voting methods. Saying get rid of itunes is just saying make the voting less transparent. It isn’t going to change who does well. Plus the cumulative count is a darn good method of ensuring that commercially viable people win. Look at last season’s top three, they each have a single and in the last week+ showed up on The Voice to promote: Cassadee has the most sales, then Terry (although his single is a few months old and he already charted with it once with his core fans and he doesn’t have a record company promoting him), then Nicholas…just like the voting, and just like you would expect. Cassadee is the most generally popular artist and then they get progressively more niche.
Instead of getting rid of Blake, maybe the contestants should recognize his voting block power and start picking him over “king of the 4 chair turn” Adam who is only going to send them home in the battles and knockouts (and then with horrible song choices and generally bad coaching). Shakira started to play like Blake half way through and she got better. People have really responded to quirky artists. The problem this year was just really unbalanced teams coming out of the blind auditions: Adam had all the power and the only people who’d pick Blake were country and Shakira and Usher mopped up the rest.
Emmy
June 13, 2013 @ 5:16 am
This is absolutely right!!! The unbalanced teams this year are the root of the problems! Adam’s team after the blinds was extremely strong that they alone could’ve been the top 10. MIDAS WHALE did not deserve to be booted off so early. Caroline Glaser had a lot of life left in her. Warren Stone had the potential to do some interesting crossover material. The list goes on… Unfortunately for Shakira and Usher, they lost out to the strongest contenders each and every time during the blind auditions because no one wanted to pick them. As much as I like Shakira and Usher, it will be an absolute blessing to have Christina and Cee-Lo back on the show. At least they had as much power among contestants that they could provide some kind of balance.
Ed
June 12, 2013 @ 10:49 pm
I agree with your point that, one way or the other, they need to even the playing field. The next thing that I expect to happen is that the show will become more and more “country”, Artists of other genres will begin to avoid The Voice and will try out for other shows perceived to have less of a country slant. Other judges on the show will select more and more country artists. The show will then be limited to a mostly niche audience. Not good.
Dennis Wilson
June 12, 2013 @ 10:21 pm
BETTER STILL…..WHY NOT TAP INTO THE CANADIAN VOTE;….we have watched this show since its inception…love it…but so frustrated that we cannot vote…maybe that would level the playing field somewhat but I think it has tons to do with coaching…Adam seldom tapped into the hot country thing this year and it cost him big time…..” Midas Whale” quit complaining here…probably wont do me any good….just sayin